The Strategic Air War Against Germany and Japan: A Memoir
Haywood S. Hansell, Jr., Major General, USAF, Retired
Office of Air Force History, United States Air Force,
Bombs burst at the Kawasaki Aircraft Plant-a strategic target located north of Tokyo. January 19, 1945
The report lists a Joint Chiefs of Staff target priority listing as of November, 1944. This included, in this priority, the Japanese aircraft industry, Japanese industrial areas, and Japanese shipping. This include attacks on aircraft and engine factories in Tokyo, Iwo Jima, Nagoya, and Akashi.
Map of the Japanese aircraft industry.
On December 1, 1944, the Joint Chiefs of Staff issued a revised memorandum describing U.S. Pacific strategy. It set three operations that would be undertaken:
The first would be after seizing Okinawa to seize any other areas that would help in a blockade of Japan and as bases for continued aerial bombardment of Japan.
The second was to be an assault on Kyushu.
The third was to be an assault on the Tokyo Plain, and Tokyo itself. The second was predicated on the first working, and the third predicated on the second working.
B-29 attacks inflicted heavy damage on the Kawasaki aircraft factories in January 1945.
JAPANESE AIRCRAFT PRODUCTION
A list of 22 Japanese cities was drawn up which were considered the “most vital Japanese cities from the standpoint of the important industries they contained.”
Incendiary bombs shower on the dock area of Kobe, Japan, on June 5, 1945
Smoke billows from an industrial section of Yokohama, Japan, as B-29s continue to dump fire bombs during a daylight raid on May 29, 1945
Scenes of widespread destruction greeted the first Americans arriving at Yokohama harbor three days after the Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945
Kobe, Japan, experienced the fury of incendiary attacks in June, 1945
Among the burned-out ruins of Tokyo, a survivor drinks from a broken water pipe
All that remains of the power and generator plant at the Imperial Fuel Industry Company at Ube after the bombing attacks of July and August 1945.
There had been a Report on Japanese War Production Industries that set out various objectives for the air force:
1. To bring about an overwhelming and immediate drop in war production.
2. To shut off output of certain high priority items of war production.
3. To accelerate the rate of the existing decline of overall war production.
4. To force a substantial cut in production of those military supplies of such high priority that they would otherwise withstand the effects of the current restrictive economic forces.
One thing to not forget: not only was the U.S. forcing the war production capability of Japan to drop, but it was also making it much, much harder for the things that were produced to get to where the Japanese wanted them to go. The U.S. submarines took a major toll of the Japanese merchant fleet, and regular Air Force bombing also took out ships, so much of the supplies that were produced ended up at the bottom of the ocean.
Map of the Pacific Theater
Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page
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